The invention is in the field of medical diagnosis of cardiac problems.
After a heart attack, a common procedure is to open the coronary artery through angioplasty. An ECG can identify a location of cardiac damage but not quantify it. Even invasively opening an artery in the heart through urgent angioplasty cannot determine the extent to which the myocardium has died. One problem is determining quantitatively the amount of reperfusion that has occurred in the myocardium after opening the coronary artery after the heart attack as well as determining the amount of restoration of function in the subject's heart after the heart attack. A parallel problem is determining, after the artery has been opened, an amount of viable or salvageable heart muscle after a heart attack occurs. Even after opening the cardiac artery one cannot determine the extent that the heart muscle has died and quantifying the severity of a heart attack (i.e. severe, moderate, light). Knowing this affects prognosis and treatment for the patient. A further problem is deciding when to discontinue administration of thrombolysis, especially based on a quantitative determination.
In addition, when a patient goes to the emergency room reporting chest pain, an ECG and a cardiac enzyme test are performed. It is widely recognized, however, that normal ECG and negative enzyme test results will result in 24 hour patient hospitalization as a precaution. Since 80% of patients who report to the hospital emergency room with chest pain have chest pain that is not cardiac related, current clinical practice results in many unnecessary hospitalizations.
There is therefore a compelling need to have improved methods, apparatuses and/or systems for accurate diagnosis of cardiac related chest pain and there is a compelling need to have accurate diagnostics for other cardiac related issues.